Not in the guidelines but Clerc was on the ground for ages and AAC appeared unhurt and got straight up. Clerc was probably milking it, but just something random that could influence the ref on field.

My 2 cents.

Forthe benefit of the players safety, the law should be (more) clearly defined, and (more) consistantly refereed. Referee'ing interpretation is muddiying the waters, and sending confusion to the spectators. Paddy, put down your Chardonnay and do your job.

Whether the tackle is considered dangerous or not, should not be judged on the condition of the tackled player after the incident. If the player has the skill/experience/fortune to brace himself from injury does not change the intent of the tackler. If we do go down that path, we may see more of the soccer antics of the melodrama hapening out after the tackle, being necessary to milk the card or not.

Define a law, as clearly as possible in this situation, make the players, coaches, and spectators well aware of it, and coach our ref's on consitently inplementing it.

After my rant last week it appears that referees are now clamping down on lifting to the horizontal. I don't for one moment think my post was the cause of that, just that the referees minders obviously thought it needed cracking down on after Bryce's no-show last week. Generally it is being penalised when its lifting to the 90 without cards, which I think is appropriate. If its lifting and spearing then it needs to be red carded and yellow and white if the referee is not sure.

Was it obstruction? Horne made contact with a defender no doubt about it. But let's look at how the defender made contact, he was drawn to tackle Horne, he took the wrong man and made the wrong defensive decision. I believe it wasn't obstruction because Horne didn't simple take a defender out, the defender chose to make contact, slight difference if Horne ran into him.

If refereeing standards are currently as bad as people claim, then every time we lose a top ref we should be mourning.

So here we have B.Lawrence, who is capable of reffing test rugby and has many years left in him, and people are hoping his career ends tomorrow? Is there a better ref from NZRU who is going to take his place? Even if there is that isn't an argument to hope he retires, it's an argument against the selection system, which most people don't have any clue about.

Regardless of your opinion of him, he is clearly in the top 1% of rugby union referees in the world (all test refs are). Anyone with that sort of experience is a big loss to the game. Not to mention his knowledge of the laws is probably second to none.

Bryce Lawrence is kind of like the Matt Dunning in that sense I suppose. A lot of people think he's useless, but there is always a place for him in rugby. Depending on the stocks available he could be playing super rugby, club rugby or sometimes test rugby. People who never wanted him to play at any level ever again were just appealing to their emotions.

Was it obstruction? Horne made contact with a defender no doubt about it. But let's look at how the defender made contact, he was drawn to tackle Horne, he took the wrong man and made the wrong defensive decision. I believe it wasn't obstruction because Horne didn't simple take a defender out, the defender chose to make contact, slight difference if Horne ran into him.

Thoughts?

I think that is a pretty tenuous call. I think regardless of whether Horne was there, AAC would have been able to power through Sidey's tackle and across the line, but it was still obstruction. Horne ran into a player who could potentially have tackled the ball carrier. You can talk about making the wrong defensive decision but he wasn't given any choice. It wouldn't have been possible to not tackle Horne and tackle AAC instead. Unfortunate for the Tahs because they deserved to score there, but perhaps it was karma catching up for the Kingston try.